Years ago a friend of mine had to do an experiment for her pedagogy paper. (Yes, it was you, K.) She came over to my place one evening and announced she'd put some hypothetical dilemmas to me, to which I should respond truthfully. Being a little bastard at the time (a perhaps even today) I replied: "No problem, but if your paper is about Kohlberg's stages of moral development, I'm afraid I know the correct answer to each one". Her face darkened and she must have said something like "I knew it, you pedantic twat!" Sure, I felt guilty, but in the interest of good science, I thought it best to state that I was not her proper demographic. Besides, I couldn't help it that my professor had been on about the same thing only the day before! Anyway, we ended up having an interesting conversation about it, so no hard feelings. Today, years and years later (I'm thinking it must be at least seven or eight years ago), I was suddenly reminded of Kohlberg and that evening again...
But first for some explaining. It's easy, basically, Kohlberg teaches how people develop a sense for what's right or wrong in stages. First, when you're a small child, you're in the pre-conventional stage, deciding on dilemmas by avoiding punishment or looking for a reward. Then, you start to grow up and arrive at a conventional stage, where you do or don't do something to be a good boy/girl, or conform to some authority (police, etc). Finally, as an adult (or some adults at least), you reach the post-conventional stage and realise that there's a social contract we all have to sign. We live in a society, and you can't expect you're rights to be respected, if you're not willing to agree to respected someone else's. Can you? To do so, we develop rules and give people the power to enforce them, but that's only because we agree upon a contract, not because this power or these rules are absolute.
So today I was sitting quietly on the train from Leuven over Brussels to Ghent when the ticket guy came round. Of course, I dutifully showed him my ticket, complete with a polite 'Here you go'. Fifteen minutes later, the same ticket inspector returned to my carriage for a second round of inspection. When he came to me, I did what most people do. I gave him the 'Been seen'. Usually this is met with a nod, most guys being happy to be able to proceed. This guy, however, put his hands in his waist and proclaimed: 'Sir, I'll be the judge of that. I will have to see your ticket again please'. And then I got angry. 'Fucking train guy', I thought, 'my last rail pass was spent with five uninspected lines. Now you're gonna ask me twice in the span of fifteen minutes? How about having the trains arrive in time?' That sort of stupid thing.
And then it hit me. 'This is just a guy wearing an ugly grey NMBS T-shirt', I thought, 'he has no real authority or power over me!' And in a fit of moral superiority, I happily produced my ticket again and obliged to his wish. But not without thinking 'Here's some level 5, post-conventional Kohlberg for you to shove up your arse'. Phew. Only narrowly avoided a fine there! But wait a minute... Yeah, still a child at heart sometimes.
But first for some explaining. It's easy, basically, Kohlberg teaches how people develop a sense for what's right or wrong in stages. First, when you're a small child, you're in the pre-conventional stage, deciding on dilemmas by avoiding punishment or looking for a reward. Then, you start to grow up and arrive at a conventional stage, where you do or don't do something to be a good boy/girl, or conform to some authority (police, etc). Finally, as an adult (or some adults at least), you reach the post-conventional stage and realise that there's a social contract we all have to sign. We live in a society, and you can't expect you're rights to be respected, if you're not willing to agree to respected someone else's. Can you? To do so, we develop rules and give people the power to enforce them, but that's only because we agree upon a contract, not because this power or these rules are absolute.
So today I was sitting quietly on the train from Leuven over Brussels to Ghent when the ticket guy came round. Of course, I dutifully showed him my ticket, complete with a polite 'Here you go'. Fifteen minutes later, the same ticket inspector returned to my carriage for a second round of inspection. When he came to me, I did what most people do. I gave him the 'Been seen'. Usually this is met with a nod, most guys being happy to be able to proceed. This guy, however, put his hands in his waist and proclaimed: 'Sir, I'll be the judge of that. I will have to see your ticket again please'. And then I got angry. 'Fucking train guy', I thought, 'my last rail pass was spent with five uninspected lines. Now you're gonna ask me twice in the span of fifteen minutes? How about having the trains arrive in time?' That sort of stupid thing.
And then it hit me. 'This is just a guy wearing an ugly grey NMBS T-shirt', I thought, 'he has no real authority or power over me!' And in a fit of moral superiority, I happily produced my ticket again and obliged to his wish. But not without thinking 'Here's some level 5, post-conventional Kohlberg for you to shove up your arse'. Phew. Only narrowly avoided a fine there! But wait a minute... Yeah, still a child at heart sometimes.
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